“Not a good place to work. Not anymore. ”

Comp & Benefits

Work/Life Balance

Senior Management

Career Opportunities

Former Employee - Interface Analyst in Raleigh, NC

Former Employee - Interface Analyst in Raleigh, NC

I worked at Allscripts

Pros

The benefits are really good or at least used to be. Most of the people that work there are very nice. The location used to be good until the merger when the new location became raleigh instead of cary.They used to give movie theatre tickets for each anniversary and they used to give 50 dollar visa card for your birthday.

Cons

This company has gone from a great place to work to a totally horrible place to work. When the company was A4 health systems it was great. They would bring in food for the support team to eat. Then when we merged with allscripts all of that stopped but the company was still an ok place to work. Then the merger with misys health systems killed whatever good was left in the company. People are leaving this company left and right.There is a huge salary discrepancy here at this company that is widely talked about by management etc but nothing is done about it.The misys healthcare previous employees are paid an average of 20k more a year than the employees from legacy allscripts for doing the exact same position.Here are some examples.Interface escalation person (previous misys employee) 60k a year.Interface escalation person (previous allscripts) 45k a year.Here is another comparison.application manager from previous misys: 80k a year. application manager from previous allscripts 55k a yearThese are not made up numbers. These are actual facts from real employees working here in this company. Managers in meetings with employees from both sides have admitted the discrepancies yet nothing is ever done about it. Human resources here lied and said that they were creating salary ranges and profiles to address the salary issues and that an "adjustment" would be made. This supposed adjustment only ended up being a typical 3 to 5 percent raise.3 to 5 percent raise does not come close to adjusting a 20k a year discrepancy between employees. You basically truly have support individuals from legacy misys making more money than the legacy allscripts "managers" who manager them. Its a horribly unfair company that refuses to address this problem and this well known fact creates a huge divide within the company straight down the middle. This truly is two different companys running in the same building with two totally different mindsets. The legacy allscripts people are the hard workers who get the job done and are paid well below what they should be for it. The legacy misys employees are the majority lazy and laid back and take extended lunch breaks and get paid much higher salaries. The divide has now been created even bigger because you now are mix and matching employees from misys onto support teams for allscripts products and so then you have the misys employee making 55 to 60k and the allscripts person making 40k working on the same team doing the same job in and many instances the employee from allscripts has been an employee for a longer amount of time! You also now have outsourcing to india ramping up like its going out of style. They are undercutting our american jobs and angering off all the clients in the process. They do very poor work and can't even talk on the client on the phone. Anytime they speak with clients they anger the clients off. Allscripts doesnt care. They are wanting to save the almighty dollar so that the upper level management and all the way to the top get their big millions of dollars bonuses while the salaries of the true employees stay well below the market pay for the same positions. This is the main reason that employees are unhappy and most even right now are looking to jump ship and stop getting unfairly paid and treated by allscripts(what 2 or three things does yoru employer do well that creates producitivty) It doesn't do any. There is no leadership or at least any competent leadership in this company remaining. Its not productive. they allow smokers to stay outside half the day. its allowed because the majority of the managers smoke as well and stand right out there with the support for hours on end each day while the nonsmoker employees are left to pull the slack. This should be declared a nonsmoking company and put a stop to these "smoke" breaks that destroy productivity.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

1. All senior leadership both in the Pro PM world and the Pro EHR world must be removed and replaced with competent leaders. This goes for the manager who is the combined manager over both of these departments as well. 2. The managers for the different applications must be employees who actually worked their way up through the ranks through the support team to become manager. The new "misys" practice of putting managers in place who have no knowledge of the product is a misguided practice and one that has created this debacle. These clueless managers must be removed immediately. They are basically using the team leads under them as a crutch to hide the fact that they don't know anything. You cannot succesfully manage or talk to angry clients when you know nothing about the product you manager. And no, simply sending them to a training class for a day is not good enough. You can only learn these products by actually supporting them over time.3. The old buddy system must be totally removed which removing all of the current managers will do. This buddy system is what created all of the manager figureheads who know nothing about the products they manage. Fully capable and qualified individuals are turned down for manager jobs and instead the employees who are friends outside of work with the manager are put into positions beneath them. This is an inexcusable practice and must be stopped immediately. It is killing the company.4. The outsourcing to india must be stopped immediately. You are pissing off all of the clients and they are leaving us left and right. Do you like calling a company for support and get an indian on the phone and can't understand them. Guess what. Neither does the dr's and nurses. Clients are leaving in droves due to this idiotic cheap way out. Allscripts is also now trying to sneakily start moving more and more of the support roles and development jobs over to india and in the process is pushing american jobs away. They don't want this to be known to the clients or the public but its happening and at a quicker pace now due the incoming merger with eclipsys. This goes all the way to the top of the company. Someone needs to take over this company and fire every last one of the managers from the very top and all the way down and fix this disaster it has become.

PTO policy is great - 23 days off, incl. sick days (but subject to change upon Eclipsys merger)Decent benefits: 401K, health, etc.Free soda in the Chicago officeMost of the people who work there are ok to deal withGood work/life balance- note that this is for working in internal operations, not implementations which carries completely different lifestyle

Cons

Decisions are not always made based on who has the best ideas, but by who happens to fall within political favor. The company has at times immensely talented people working for it, but many of them end up leaving for both voluntary and involuntary reasons because management pushes them away. I cannot speak to the company pre-Misys, but from what I hear legacy Allscripts has been stingier on pay than Misys (and of course the legacy Allscripts mentality has prevailed). With the Eclipsys merger commencing, departments have been tied up with senseless infighting of middle managers and a clash of incompatible office cultures. The end result has only further damaged an already bad customer service reputation and prevented many worthy employees of making advancements. The new organizational structure is a bureaucratic labyrinth where the once "can do" entrepreneurial spirit of Allscripts has been lost. To get anything good done, one must muster the support of a long chain of uninformed middle managers. (and good luck with that!) The middle management malaise of the Eclipsys merger has prompted some of the best employees to flee, even without regard to the bad economy.

Glen seems most preoccupied with seeing his photograph in print and having his stock options/paycheck flourish rather than growing the company. A politician type fellow, he doesn't mingle with anyone lower than the executive clique. Bill Davis, a long time buddy of Glen, is much of the same. I would add that Bill's management style aligns well with that of the "pointy haired" boss from Dilbert, who doesn't know what's right under his nose. No chance of advancing to the executive level unless you have been long time pals with Glen.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Executives, you can only ride the wave of ARRA for so long. Things are great for the top dogs only because the industry's tide is lifting all boats. If Glen and co were running a company this way in any more of a competitive industry, Allscripts would be in trouble. Middle managers, email is not a system for everything. Good internal IT systems need well thought out planning. The tool is only as good as the people who implement & use it. View your employees as resources to be invested and built up rather expenses to be trimmed. When it comes to human capital you get what you pay for.... most of the time. But most important, you guys need to listen to the people you hire.